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What is the best way to evaluate external links coming in to my site?  I have been working on trying to build links by commenting on blogs/forums and adding to directories, etc. I've run link reports through Open Site Explorer and Yahoo and they never seem to show the same links coming in. For example, i run link eport on Open Site Explorer and it will show links coming into my site that Yahoo doesn't show, and vice versa.

I guess I'm trying to figure best way to monitor each week new links coming into my site to determine if my efforts are fruitful.  Also, is there a certain period of time that should pass from time I put my link on another site (ie, a blog) until it will show up in OPen Site Explorer?

Thanks!  Oh, and I use the NoDoFollow Add-on for Firefox to only comment on those sites that do follow.  Not sure if that's really effective or not.

Thanks everyone for the answers; they were all extremely helpful.

I have a competitor who always ranks very on alot keywords relevant to our business and using Open Site Explorer I note they have a tremendous amount of links.  I also noticed that it appears their web company has gone out and set up numerous websites with relevant content, and then have linked back to the competitors main site.  Is this kosher?  I ask because before I settled on my current domain name, I purchased several keyword rich domain names; should I be thinking of setting up websites with relevant (and original) content and link back to my main site?

I have a competitor who always ranks very on alot keywords relevant to our business and using Open Site Explorer I note they have a tremendous amount of links.  I also noticed that it appears their web company has gone out and set up numerous websites with relevant content, and then have linked back to the competitors main site.  Is this kosher?  I ask because before I settled on my current domain name, I purchased several keyword rich domain names; should I be thinking of setting up websites with relevant (and original) content and link back to my main site?

Thanks everyone for the answers; they were all extremely helpful.